


a thousand words

by malignance



Series: you and me, the sky and the sea [1]
Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 06:08:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20110381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malignance/pseuds/malignance
Summary: Ben and Evie don't talk, but that doesn't mean they don't communicate.





	a thousand words

**Author's Note:**

> in honor of d3 coming out & not letting me have even one iota of ben/evie

There's something awful about the way he smiles. Evie can't quite place her finger on it, but just knows something about it is foul. 

He smiles, again, lips tugged up at the corners, lopsided with that boyish kind of quality that always makes Evie's stomach churn.

It's so real, and disarming, Evie can't help but think he's doing it on purpose, trying to catch her by surprise with his grins and laughs. What he doesn't know, is that Evie doesn't give up easy. She refuses to let that smile dig up her weaknesses, to let him coax her vulnerabilities out of her. She'll win this fight, he'll see. She will not lose to him, not to his charm, or his kindness, or his devastatingly pretty face.

_She won't. _

There's something curious about the way she looks at him. Ben doesn't know what he sees, just knows that there _is_ something there.

Sometimes he'll catch her looking at him, from the corner of his eye, and something about the way she stares, the heaviness of her gaze, as if boring into his very being, sends endless chills up his spine.

The first time, he had taken it as hostility, something of a warning. But the more she looked, the more he looked back, he started to realise she was just observing him, as if he was something foreign and strange. The rest of them had looked at him like that too, once, but she never stops. 

He challenges that gaze one day, feeling a surge of courage from somewhere unknown, and then smiles at her.

Her expressions shift in this order: alarm, confusion, suspicion. 

Then, after a moment, she smiles back. It's subtle, something small, easily missed. But the simple quirk of her lips removes all the breath from his lungs in almost an instant. And he had known she was beautiful, he always had, but in that moment she was so much beyond that, and it had thrown him completely. 

The smile disappears after barely a second, but the damage was already done.

They don't speak, and Evie hadn't really realised that until Jay had pointed it out one day. 

Evie had dismissed it at first, because the idea had seemed so ridiculous, but the more she thought about it, the more she knew it as the truth.

They would glance at each other occasionally, but they'd never actually spoken a word to one another.

Still, knowing that, it didn't seem to her like they hadn't communicated. Maybe they didn't speak, not with words, but maybe they sang to each other with their eyes, laughed at each other with their hands, connected each other with their smiles.

She fails to remember how it began, just that it did, just that all she needed to do was look at him to know what he was thinking, what he wanted to say. She's sure he could do the same with her. And maybe once upon a time that thought would've scared her, but now it brings an odd sense of comfort, of safety.

She catches his eyes on her, and when she returns his gaze, she doesn't smile, but he seems to see it in her eyes anyway.

She knows talking could never be as good as this.

He's surrounded by chaos. The world, for all he knows, is falling around his feet. 

He's vaguely aware he's running, but he's not entirely sure where to, just that he had to get somewhere safer, somewhere calmer, and fast.

Mal's a few steps ahead of him, looking every bit as if she knew exactly what she was doing. Ben was glad, as he had no idea what to do.

The turmoil tosses him around for a while, running here, running there, words, words, words. He doesn't hear any of it. His bones rattle, his eyes shake, his hands, where are his hands again?

Someone says something else, _something something ember something something Audrey something something spell, _but he's not listening anymore. Was he ever listening to begin with? 

He searches frantically (they all are but he's not looking for the same thing), and the world seems to come to a screeching halt when he finally finds _her _eyes.

His lungs are working overtime, his legs still moving although having lost most of its feeling, but everything to him is still now, a little clearer than it was before. His eyes are open again, he starts to recognise his surroundings. The whole world shifts into familiarity again as she stands before him. 

She doesn't say anything, because she never does, because they never need to. She looks at him though, and that look means so many things. Her hand reaches out to him, despite the fact that they're too far to touch, and he reaches back. The distance between them doesn't close, but it's there, the sensation, the feeling of her hand in his. It's enough.

He pushes and pushes, and once at the edge of the world, he jumps, yelling incoherently at the mist in front of him, trying to save, save, save.

Things look a little different now. The trees are a deeper shade of green, Mal's hair a bluer shade of purple, the sky a lighter shade of pink. 

Everyone was asleep but now they are awake. Audrey was there and now she was here. 

Evie smiles when Carlos wraps his arms around her waist, when Jay lifts her up as he laughs, when Mal cries her relief into her shoulder.

She is still smiling, when she approaches Ben, half a word on the tip of her tongue, an entire universe flashing through her eyes. 

He doesn't smile back, but his hand (his real hand, made of bone and flesh and skin) takes hold of hers almost desperately. 

He looks out at the hills, at the sky, and her fingers squeeze around his. 

Part of her thinks he might open his mouth now, speak to her like he does to everybody else. But he doesn't. He turns to her slow, almost uncertain, and cocks his head to the side.

She, not hesitant like him, crushes her lips to his almost immediately, almost too fast. 

He catches her though, her mouth with his, and sighs into the kiss.

No words are exchanged, but as she cards her fingers through his hair, she tells him a million things. She tells him of how scared she was, how worried she was, how unbelievably glad she is now. When his fingers reach around her hip, his thumb tracing little shapes against her skin, he tells her of his own fears, his own doubts, and finally of his joy, his happiness. 

And then, he pulls away, and smiles.

_I love you._

She quirks an eyebrow, her lips curling ever so slightly at the corners.

_I love you too. _

**Author's Note:**

> au where things pretty much happen as it does in the movies just except ben & mal break up in the second movie & audrey turning evil this time was mostly driven by her grandmother rather than ben & mal. & in the middle of it all ben & evie fall in love uwu.


End file.
